Small Wonders: The problem with family vacations

August 24, 2012|By Patrick Caneday

Here's the problem with vacations with extended family: all those family members.

Having young children, we appreciate the importance of building memories for them; of big family gatherings that permanently frame snapshots to hang on the wall and gaze upon warmly in later years. That doesn't mean it's easy.

But it is fun just to get away for a weekend with everyone. So we went across the sea.

Twenty-six miles across the sea,

Santa Catalina is a-waitin' for me,

Santa Catalina, the island of romance, romance, romance....

I'm sure the romance is there if you look for it. Perhaps it was more evident 50-some years ago when the Four Preps immortalized it in song. What's there mostly now is tourism. But I'm not complaining.

Advertisement

Not only is Catalina Island the storied playground in the Pacific for celebrities of a bygone era and a popular recreational escape for everyone else ever since, it's also steeped in childhood memory for me as the place my father lived for a few of my formative years.

In visions that are half-dream/half-real, I walk the streets of Avalon next to my father and know for a weekend the fullness of having him in my life. Then I catch the last boat back to the mainland on Sunday and see him waving back at me from the dock. Until my next visit.

And for this visit, 35 years later, I came with my wife, kids, nieces, nephews, their grandparents and a sibling.

It's hard enough to navigate my family of four through summer crowds. But with an extended brood it's impossible. Ten different whims, desires, cravings, yearnings, emotions and directional challenges in one meandering, chaotic flock. It's a miracle we didn't kill each other or purposefully leave anyone behind.

Not that I didn't try.

But such trying times are fertile ground for memories to take root.

It will forever be the place that Thing 1 bravely fought off her fears and went parasailing for the first time. OK, we forced her. But she loved it and went again with her cousin later that same day.

Thing 2 and I will always have the postcard moment in our kayak as we followed a pair of friendly, playful sea lions across the bay.

I never missed an opportunity to point out the ubiquitous Garibaldi, overgrown goldfish lingering by docks and along the rocky coast, just as my father did when I was a boy.